Risky behaviors come together across PG-13 and R films

NEW YORK(Reuters Health) - Violent movie characters
often engage in other risky behaviors like sex and drinking,
according to a new study. Those compounded behaviors also occur
equally among PG-13 and R-rated movies.

Researchers found about 90 percent of the top-grossing
movies over a 25-year period contained at least one violent main
character. That same character engaged in at least one other
risky behavior in about 77 percent of those films.

"We know that studies have been done that linked smoking,
sex and alcohol on screen to real life," Amy Bleakley, the
study's lead author, said. "We haven't really looked at those
being clustered or what effect that might have."

Bleakley is a senior research scientist at the Annenberg
Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia.

Previous research has suggested the amount of violence in
movies has increased over the past few decades.

For example, a 2012 study found that James Bond films
contain an increasing amount of violence despite retaining the
brand's PG or PG-13 ratings from the Motion Picture Association
of American (MPAA) (see Reuters Health story of Dec. 11, 2012
here: http://reut.rs/1dV8nqq).

The MPAA uses ratings that "are assigned by a board of
parents who consider factors such as violence, sex, language and
drug use," according to the association's website.

For the new study, the researchers tracked violence and
risky behaviors in 390 top-grossing movies from 1985 to 2010.

Bleakley and her colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics
that 1985 was the first year the MPAA began assigning the PG-13
label, which strongly cautions parents that some of the movie's
content may be inappropriate for children under 13 years old.

Overall, the researchers found about 90 percent of the
movies contained violence. That was consistent across MPAA
rating labels and across the 25-year period.

Sexual content also remained steady throughout the study
period, occurring in about 82 percent of movies.

The proportion of movies with alcohol use decreased from
about 90 percent in 1985 to about 70 percent in 2010.

Tobacco use declined the most during the study - from 68
percent of the movies studied in 1985 to about 21 percent in
2010.

"I think smoking is unique in that there has been a societal
normative change in smoking and in the past 20 years it's less
socially acceptable smoke," Bleakley told Reuters Health. "The
movies are reflecting that."

Still, the researchers found that about 77 percent of
violent movie characters also engaged in risky behaviors - most
often drinking and sex.

What's more, there was no difference between PG-13 and R
movies in how often violent characters participated in those
other behaviors.

A restricted - or R - rating requires parental or adult
supervision for children under 17 years old.

"I think the take home message from this is that the motion
picture rating system is not helping parents discriminate which
movies children should see and which movies they should stay
away from," Dr. James Sargent said.

Sargent, from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and
the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, has
studied media influences on youth but wasn't involved in the new
study.

He said the decline in smoking in films during the study
period shows that the industry can change.

"It's important to remember that a PG-13 is a strong warning
to parents about the content of a film, and it is accompanied by
a descriptor that gives parents specific detail about which
elements of the film warranted the rating," wrote MPAA
spokesperson Kate Bedingfield in a statement to Reuters Health.

"The purpose of the rating system is to reflect the
standards of American parents, not set them - the rating board
tries to rate a film the way they believe a majority of American
parents would rate it," she said.

"Societal standards change over time and the rating system
is built to change with them."

Bleakley and her colleagues write that movies can create
so-called scripts that show what is supposed to happen in a
specific environment, like when violence should be used. It's
possible that children would pick up on those scripts.

"They could be modeling what they see in the movies and
knowing these behaviors cluster in the movies makes it a more
plausible hypothesis," Sargent said.

He added that parents can't rely on the rating system to
tell them which movies are appropriate for their children.

"I think the only thing they can do is restrict the number
of movies kids watch a week," he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/HjQ8dI Pediatrics, online December 9,
2013.

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